There's
a plethora of fancy-food-related sites on the Internet (at last count, a Google
search on "gourmet restaurants" got 44,700 hits; "gourmet recipes", 21,800),
but the really serious aficionados seem to be attracted to two culinary lodestones:
www.chowhound.com and www.eGullet.com. The Chowhound has been gnawing
away for years on a variety of bones and is the more widely known and accessed
of the two, but eGullet has, in only a year, become the bitch in heat that
has drawn some of the more serious studs away from the faithful old pooch.

EGullet
is densely populated with anonymous chefs, journalists and high-rollers who
publicly debate the finer points of cuisine, décor and finance. "Art" is invoked
so frequently and so fervently that fine food often becomes an object of devout
contemplation. Some correspondents are awe-inspiring in the breadth of their
restaurant experience and the zeal and diligence of their reportage. One prolific
contributor who recently went for a meal at New York's hottest new property
was recognized by name and soon joined at table by the chef, who had prepared
three pages of notes on his guest's detailed analysis of his restaurant! Amidst
such burgeoning notoriety, the site tends to become a mutual admiration society
in which a few of the active participants spend a lot of time massaging each
other's egos.

Not
surprisingly, their disposable income appears to be stratospheric. These
are big spenders who discuss in detail the culinary delights they have sampled
in their treks to a whole galaxy of Michelin-starred restaurants - the fruits
of a NASA-like expenditure.For example, Albert Adriŕ's celebrated I Bulli is located inaccessibly high in
the hills north of Barcelona and is virtually impossible to book; but a recent
discussion included detailed accounts from several correspondents covering
the entire history of its scientifically conceived, extravagantly futuristic
culinary inventions. Impecunious foodies can save themselves a great deal
of time and money by vicariously devouring its copious menu through these
closely documented descriptions.

Nor
are these the reports of official inspectors whose tab is picked up by an
indulgent publisher; the correspondents are, in old fashioned parlance, paying
guests. And so, whenever a topic veers in the direction of politics (which
is often), it tends to enforce the reassuring American dogma that those who
can afford to blow a small fortune on a single meal are so blessed because
of their "merit". In an echo of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches evangelism,
we were recently informed by a correspondent that ". . .a large percentage of people who
are eating [at XXXX] are people like me. Sons of immigrants who are self-made
and . . . are children and grandchildren of immigrants whose ancestors came
here as peasants or the lower classes and now they themselves can earn upwards
of $1,000,000 a year for their efforts." "Show me that phenomenon in any other
country in the world," he patriotically concludes. A few replies suggested
that this take on his fellow-diners might be a trifle Utopian, but eventually
the discussion got back to basics: "Merit, schmerit. Enjoy your food! [chuckle]"

Steven A. Shaw ("The Fat Guy"), one of eGullet's gurus, is a successful
lawyer who has written a history of Britain's BSE crisis ( "Mad
Cows and Englishmen" ) in which he condemns prissy scientists' devotion
to the precautionary principle and proposes that protecting the environment
should be left to cost/benefit analysis - a position so far out in right field
as to locate him comfortably between the covers of Irving Kristol's reactionary
Commentary Magazine (and get him a nomination for the James Beard Award).
But it would be a mistake to write him off. His other Beard nomination, which
rightly won first place in the Internet Column and Feature Writing category,
was for "A Week in the Gramercy
Tavern Kitchen" , a diary of his hard time spent at the sharp end of one
of New York's most distinguished restaurants. This meticulously detailed record
tells us more about what really goes on behind the swinging doors than a whole
shelf of sado-masochistic Kitchen Confidentials.

Most eGullet correspondents
are contemptuous of published restaurant guides. The reader may deduce that
the standards set by these publications are simply too plebeian. With rare
exceptions, eGullet is not the place to go in order to discover, in the words
of Jane Grigson, "a better standard of ordinariness". One active and respected
participant has privately confessed to me that "[A] problem I have with eGullet
is the heavy emphasis on 2 star and 3 star restaurants. It seems that few
are interested in a reasonably priced bistro or restaurant with regional cuisine."

But if you're about to
blow your wad in a strange city, you'd be well advised to visit the relevant
eGullet geographical "board" and make enquiries. Chances are that the information
you get will be more detailed, discriminating and up-to-date than the guidebooks,
with their space restrictions and long delays in editing and printing. Years
ago a dog-eared Blue Guide handed down from your grandfather might contain
useful suggestions as to where to dine, but today the restaurant scene is
so volatile that a fantastic new beanery may go belly-up before the reviewer's
ink is dry.

I DON'T wish to belittle the accomplishments of our greatest modern
chefs, but there is a growing tendency for the world's most splendid restaurants
to resemble each other to the point where, from internal evidence, you might
be unable to deduce exactly where (or what) you were eating. Russ Parsons
of The Los Angeles Times wrote recently on the eGullet site, "[T]he
thing that troubles me about fusion cooking (whatever you take that to mean)
is the growing uniformity I find in restaurants around the world. It gets
to the point that I sometimes can't tell which city I'm in - Paris, London,
Alba, LA? Roughly the same ingredients prepared in roughly the same way."

This is particularly the case in those countries which lack a coherent
native cuisine. Britain (which destroyed its culinary traditions by means
of the enclosures and the industrial revolution) and the US (which could never
make up its mind which tradition to expropriate and so seized them all) are
both fertile environments for these deracinated hothouse hybrids. France may
be losing its culinary traditions at an alarming rate, but Mary and I are
always happy to return to a country where we can order from a menu and be
reasonably certain that we will recognize what is placed before us. In such
a reassuringly stable environment one is more likely to exclaim "Wow!" after
eating a meal than before.

THIS, I suggest, is what good food is really about, no matter what
its ethnic origins. I hope I have convinced you that the time consumed in
following eGullet's tortuous threads would be better invested in attentive
reading, cooking and tasting. Good. Now if you'll excuse me, there's an argument
currently simmering over whether restaurant reviewers should remain anonymous,
and I must get back and add a dollop of chili sauce. . .